Removing Trauma from the Body
Emotional Resolution, or EmRes, is about balancing your feelings by addressing the emotions embedded in your bodies, replaying them when triggered by similar situations, enlarging the scope of the current circumstances and keeping us in a seemingly endless cycle of drama and pain.
Neuroscientist and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk, MD, has spent his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences. He has some exciting things to say about how trauma affects our bodies and compensating behaviors.
“The trauma caused by childhood neglect, sexual or domestic abuse and war wreaks havoc in our bodies” — Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score.
He says that we commonly think that trauma is a story about the past. But trauma changes our brain so that the person sees and experiences the world differently than other human beings. Research shows that “it is almost impossible to become a drug addict/alcoholic without having a prior history of childhood trauma.” Addiction is the result of these people desperately trying to manage unbearable physical sensations.
Peter Levine, PhD has also spent a career working with trauma. He developed a body-awareness approach to healing trauma called Somatic Experiencing (SE). SE focuses on the physiological responses that occur when someone experiences or remembers an overwhelming or traumatic event in their body rather than only through the thoughts or emotions connected to it. His method allows and encourages the body’s sensations, trapped by the trauma, to be discharged using several “resources” to ground the person in the present moment, reinforcing the client’s inherent capacity to self-regulate.
“The bodies of traumatized people portray “snapshots” of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to a threat, frozen in time. Traumatized people are not suffering from a disease in the normal sense of the word- they have become stuck in an aroused state. It is difficult, if not impossible, to function normally under these circumstances.” — Peter A. Levine
I find it affirming and corroborating that these two world-renowned and respected experts in the field of trauma research both agree that unprocessed emotions are trapped in the body. And that the best path to recovery is to work to release the frozen emotions from the body.
Connecting Trauma and Chronic Pain
In my work, I’ve found that my clients who are struggling with the repercussions of trauma have issues on two fronts: Emotional and Physical. Often, they are in traditional therapy of some kind but find it hard to make headway because of chronic physical distractions.
Traumatic emotions are buried in the body and resurface as pain and named disorders when left unresolved over long periods. When pain and discomfort are first and foremost in a person’s mind, it is challenging to work on anything else, even if “anything else” is critical to relieving emotional pain.
Emotional Resolution is a simple method of releasing buried emotions, regardless of the circumstances around their internment. In specialized EmRes sessions, the client addresses emotional situations and reactions to their pain and trauma. The practitioner guides them through a protocol of physical sensory awareness, or interoception, which releases the triggered emotion buried in the body. The body can then finish processing the emotion, and it is released. The unburdened immune and repair system is freed to do its job and heal the chronic issue.
Emotion work, using EmRes, can be an asset to any recovery process. For chronic physical issues, it has produced headway and breakthroughs in my clients. These cases reinforce my enthusiasm and desire to champion this work. It’s so important to those of us that need it.
Are you ready to release your buried trauma and chronic body pain?
references
Video with Bessel van der Kolk https://youtu.be/GWEjnGsLN-0
YouTube with Peter Levine https://youtu.be/nmJDkzDMllc
